Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, there, listener.
[00:00:01] So it's been a while, maybe a year and a half, since I put an episode of this podcast out. And I want to take a little bit of time to tell you why, because the real reason feels a little embarrassing. And also because it turns out that the reason is the same shape as the thing that I actually want to talk about today.
[00:00:37] So why did I let the podcast go cold? There was no conscious decision. That's the first thing. Nothing blew up. I didn't sit down and think, right, I'm done with this. One week I just didn't record, and then the next week I didn't record. And then it had been a month, and then it had been a lot longer than a month. And underneath that, if I'm honest, I wasn't getting much back. The numbers weren't growing. Nobody was writing in.
[00:01:02] And when you're talking into a microphone by yourself in a room and nothing comes back, you start to feel like somebody who thinks they're a lot more interesting than they actually are. Like, seriously, who wants to hear me blather on? Plus, you know, life. I'm busy. I've got dogs to train. I've got a business to run. And it was a really easy thing to drop. There's nothing dramatic about it at all.
[00:01:24] I did try to come back earlier this year. I made an episode, and I had it all ready to go.
[00:01:30] And I was, at the same time, kind of in the middle of defending myself over something which, I'll be honest with you, is not the only time that this has happened. In the last couple of years, there's been some stuff aimed at me from the community that I'm not going to get into today. But it took more out of me than I expected it to, and I got through it.
[00:01:50] But afterwards, I just felt kind of wrung out. And then I stopped again with the podcast. Maybe I'll talk about all of it one day. Not today, though. Maybe never.
[00:02:01] Okay. Anyways, here's the part that actually matters, and it's the part that I've only worked out recently.
[00:02:08] That whole time, there was a room full of people who wanted the podcast.
[00:02:13] Wednesday nights, office hours. And a few of the people in office hours told me flat out more than once that they missed the podcast and in that office hours room because it's a safe space for everybody who attends, I. And we could talk about and bring up things that we wouldn't talk about out in the open that I would never have put in a social media feed. Not because those things were secret.
[00:02:37] But because in that Office Hours space, there's room for nuance.
[00:02:42] Somebody can ask a follow up question, one of us can be wrong out loud and then fix it 30 seconds later. And in that space, we trust each other. We hold space for each other. One of my Agility Challenge members said something in Office Hours a while back that I've been thinking about ever since.
[00:02:58] They said if they didn't already know me and trust me and they would just. And they just heard me talking about some of the stuff that I talk about cold, they would never have trusted me. But because they did already trust me, they were willing to give my suggestions a try. And then they were really appreciative after the fact and realized that the reality of things just didn't match the hype or whatever that they had heard on social media.
[00:03:22] And you guys, I have to say I've been carrying that around as a compliment, but it isn't one. Not entirely. Because what it actually means is that the only people getting the honest version of what I think are people who already trust me. And that's a closed loop. That's a room with the door shut.
[00:03:41] So I spent a year and a half not talking to anybody who wasn't already in the room.
[00:03:46] And I told myself I called that running out of things to say. That's what I genuinely thought was happening.
[00:03:53] But it's not true. I had plenty to say. I just only felt safe saying it to people who already knew me. Which is exactly the same shape as what I'm about to tell you that I got wrong for years and years, over a decade at least.
[00:04:08] Because when you decide something isn't safe to say out loud, it doesn't mean you stop believing it. You just stop getting better at saying it. So here's the thing that I got wrong.
[00:04:18] Okay? So I need to give you a little context first. And I want to be careful about how I do that, because I'm not telling you this part to brag. I'm telling you because it matters to the story.
[00:04:30] So I've been on the FCI AKC World Championship team multiple times. Nine times. I've got multiple medals from big international competitions throughout the years I've won national championships. I've spent a very long time doing this agility thing. Even up to this year, 2026, I was on the European Open Team USA with two dogs, not one, two. And last year, 2025, I was on the FCI World Championship Team with one of my dogs. Dude. And then in the spring of this year, 2026, I meddled at the World Agility Open with Savvy, his litter mate.
[00:05:06] And I did a lot of that with cookies, with positive reinforcement. Really good positive reinforcement. Thousands and thousands of reps of it. And I'm still doing it that way, and I do it again that way.
[00:05:20] So the story I'm about to tell you is not the story of somebody who couldn't be bothered with positive reinforcement in their training.
[00:05:28] It's not the story somebody taking a shortcut because the real way was too much work. It's not the story of a lazy trainer. I did the work. I did years of the work, and I still got this belief wrong. Here's the I had absorbed completely from everywhere, without really examining it, the idea that if you ever needed to tell your dog no, it meant you'd failed somewhere in your training.
[00:05:55] You didn't train long enough, you didn't make it valuable enough, you weren't patient enough, you weren't creative enough. A good enough trainer wouldn't have needed to ever say no to their dog. And nobody ever sat me down and said that to me in those words, because that's not how this kind of stuff works. It was just in the water. It was the thing everybody around me seemed to already agree on without question.
[00:06:19] So I believed it for a long, long time.
[00:06:22] And every time I did say no to my dog, I felt ashamed. I felt less than, and I felt like a failure. Nobody was watching me. But the culture that I was steeped in, it was right there on my shoulder. Now, here's the part that took me years to see, and it's the reason I wanted to make this episode.
[00:06:41] The belief that I had did not stop me from saying no to or correcting my dogs. It just stopped me from. From correcting my dogs. Well, it stopped me from thinking and planning for situations where my dogs might make a mistake and need more information than what a cookie alone could provide.
[00:07:02] Think about what happens when you believe you should never need to do a thing. You don't plan for it, you don't practice it. You don't build a skill around it. You never teach your dog what it means, because teaching it would mean admitting you expect to use it.
[00:07:18] So the only time it ever came out was when I was already frustrated.
[00:07:22] And that was it. That was my whole system surrounding correcting my dog. Not a decision, a reaction. My timing was actually fine because my timing is pretty good, and that's a skill I have. But there was no plan behind it, no preparation, no fairness. To the dog who had absolutely no idea what was coming or what it meant because I'd never taught them. And then afterwards, every single time, I felt like garbage every time.
[00:07:48] And for years, I read that bad feeling as my conscience. Right? I felt bad, therefore I'd done something wrong, therefore my belief was correct and I should try harder in the future to never do it again.
[00:08:00] But I don't read it that way anymore. I think the bad feelings were accurate. I just think they were about the wrong thing. It wasn't wrong the I corrected my dogs in those moments. It was wrong that it happened at the worst possible moment with zero preparation, out of frustration to a dog who couldn't have seen it coming and had no idea what it meant. And that's the part I should have felt bad about. And the belief that I was carrying made that outcome more likely, not less. It pointed the guilt at the wrong target. And so nothing ever really got better in that regard.
[00:08:31] Does that make sense? I want to say one more way, because I really think this is important.
[00:08:36] The belief didn't protect my dogs. The belief protected my self image, and my dogs paid the difference.
[00:08:42] So why am I putting this in a mental game mental toughness podcast episode instead of a training podcast episode? Because I think. Here's what I actually think happened underneath all of it. When you believe you shouldn't need to do something, but you find yourself doing it anyways, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to stop doing it. You just stop looking.
[00:09:02] You look away from that part of your own training. You don't film it, you don't analyze it, you don't ask anybody about it. You certainly don't share it on social media.
[00:09:12] And a trainer who can't look at part of their own behavior cannot improve that part. It's something that never gets better because it's something that you've decided just to not see.
[00:09:25] The thing I lost wasn't a technique. It was trust in my own eyes.
[00:09:31] And I see this everywhere, you guys, not just here.
[00:09:34] Anything you believe you shouldn't need, you end up doing anyway, but poorly, because you only ever do it in an emergency. And emergencies, especially in dog training, emergencies are where skills go to die.
[00:09:48] So that's the episode.
[00:09:50] That's what I got wrong.
[00:09:51] And the question that I'd leave you with is not about corrections or methods or any of that stuff. It's what are you not looking at?
[00:10:01] What's the part of your training that you don't film, you don't analyze, you don't bring to your coach. You don't share on social media because whatever that is, I bet money it's something that hasn't improved in years.
[00:10:16] If you want to tell me what your thing is, I would genuinely love to hear it. I've got mine. This whole episode was mine.
[00:10:23] If you want to tell me what that is, I I'd really love to hear it, even if it's just one line. And there are a couple of ways to do that. First, you can email me hereto helpaizipiel.com that goes straight to my inbox. Or go to daisypeel.com, find the page for this episode and leave a comment right there. And if you made it all the way to the end of this short little episode, do me a favor and hit subscribe or leave a rating or whatever it is that your app wants you to do.
[00:10:51] Not for any algorithm, but more so that I know that somebody's out there, that you're out there, because that's the part I got wrong last time. Also, I had no idea if anybody was listening and so I just assumed nobody was.
[00:11:06] But I'm going to try harder this time and it's good to be back and I really am going to rely on your feedback and comments and your likes and subscribes.
[00:11:15] So until the next episode, like, subscribe and share your thoughts.
[00:11:29] Sam.
